Exploring Below Ambient Water Cooling

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I am very well aware of the insulating practices of using these type cooling solutions directly on the CPU, and If I already had a freon compressor in my possession to cool my PC, then I wouldn't be water cooling at all and I'd be running sub-zero temperatures!

So let me clarify my question to you.

How do you intend to incorporate your freon compressor into water cooling, even if you use the oil as an insulator?

This is a water cooling thread!

Secondly do you actually have this freon compressor, or is this just an idea you're toying with, keep in mind please my cooling solution is 100% operational.

I'm presently operating with a water temperature of 9.5c that's 15.5c below my ambient room temperature with zero condensation, my CPU idle temperature is 12c.
 


Don't come in here taking a belligerent attitude toward others when this is not a sub zero thread in the first place it is clearly titled what it is.

Moto jokes a lot, it lightens the mood, but you are directly insulting him and you need to back off of that!

This thread is frequented by many of THGFs mod team keeping up with it's progress, so you need to consider that before you go any further with your insults.

If you'll be using your freon compressor directly on the CPU what are you in this thread for anyway, to start trouble?

If you're considering tieing your freon compressor somehow into water cooling, then be more specific and people won't be hacking on you.

So change your attitude and lets see where you're coming from, or just do yourself a favor and leave the thread of your own accord.

None of us here need an education regarding sub zero cooling, if we did, we would have already chosen that type of cooling solution.

We joke around in here sometimes but don't directly insult each other, treat each other with respect, and you'll get it back.

As a retired moderator I know the Rules of Conduct and Forum Rules better than most of the active moderators, so take this as just a friendly warning, you may need to read them, so you're aware when you've crossed the line.
 
Perhaps I should apologise as well,
I instantly went into 'Oh no not another oil post' mode,
As explained though this is the sub-ambient thread and whilst technically freezing point is indeed below ambient,
its well below the dewpoint which is kind of where we are drawing the line,
if we were going for zero/subzero cooling then there'd be a separate thread for that and I can't speak for Ryan but I'd contribute what I could in there as its another world from what we are doing here but even though I'm happy with subambient balancing for now, doesn't mean I won't explore it
I'll address some of your points but don't think I'm lashing here ok?
**IF you ever used phase cooler, TEC**
I use a Tec modded chillerbox to cool my Cpu and Gpu's occasionally as part of my loop, no condensation due to labourious research and balancing to avoid condensation
**Have I ever cooled a pc below 0 degree celsius**
Not yet, that doesn't mean I have no knowledge on the subject and its governing principles
**if no, you have no right to say something dumb as this**
Democracy gives me the right to be as dumb as I like, Go freedom 😛
**Have I had water dripping near sub-ambient surfaces?
Oh gee, i wonder why!**
That'll be that condensation we were discussing earlier...
As Ryan said I am lighthearted and try to bring some smiles to the forums but I do know what I'm doing so don't take my rebuttals as an attack, its more administrative guidance :)
Draw up a S-Z thread and lets explore ideas in there but prepare for a lot of resistance on Mineral oil until you explain better the concept you are trying to develop,
as you've just read the in last few posts we're used to being black sheep and love confusing shop staff but ease off on the attitude and join the crazy few, we need fresh minds on the case :)
@Ryan, Thank you for keeping my back mate, appreciated :)

 


I don't own this particular freon cooler, but I do have a compressor ready to be used in this project. Just for curiosity, don't you mind sharing your freon cooler?

You are stating that using freon cooler to dissipate heat from the CPU isn't related to sub-ambient cooling? Please, tell me(the ignorant one) why this isn't related? I just cannot understand why you have to incorporate water into freon cooling.

I appreciate you enforcing the forum rules, but your initial behaviors to my posts clearly violated a rule on Tom'sHardware:"Harass, threaten, embarrass or insult other users, including sending unwanted messages, attacking race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Ad hominem attacks are not permitted."

Even if my sub-zero cooling doesn't "naturally fit" in with this topic, you guys shouldn't have "hacked into me"(words from Ryan). Thus, you have no right to tell me to GTFO(that's the implication) of this thread when you broke one on your own.


Allow me to explain this: I just wanted to share my idea to cool beyond 0 without having to insulate every copper tubes for increased efficiency.
I had no malicious intent to insult anyone, really. It was my bad when I took motopsychojdn's joke as an offense. I really apologize for that. What really provoked me to go off in belligerent attitude was the community's unwillingness to accept apposing views on topic. When I first posted my comment, was I "trolling," or "sh*t posting?" NO ONE read my post carefully to know that I'm only submerging the pc to prevent condensation!
 
Guys- take it easy...let's not get so hot over a sub-ambient cooling thread. Given what has been stated, I think there has been some misunderstandings about what originally was projected with this idea.

I know for a fact that we are VERY eager to stop mineral oil submersion discussions in their tracks, but this would appear to be submersion only to curb condensation. While there might be disagreements with this idea, it varies from other oil submersion topics we've seen.

To directly offer my opinion on this, I would recommend looking into several different spray-on coatings that might offer resistance to condensation without the mess and headache of straight oil submersion.

Let's stay on topic here...should I clean up the last handful of threads to allow a mulligan on the subject matter?
 


I fully understand what he is trying to bring to the table, I do not understand why he has completely avoided some of my questions to him like.

Has he fully investigated the negatives of oil submersion?

To be more specific, loss of hardware warranty with any hardware oil submerged, the phenomenon of oil wicking through the mouse and keyboard cabling, leak consequences to surrounding environment like hardwood floors and carpeting, etc., etc..

How exactly does he intend to incorporate the freon cooling into the picture?

If he avoids answering direct questions we are left to assumptions.

No need to clean up any posts Garrett, this can just stay as an example of what to do and not do.

@unj008

First of all I apologize directly to you!

However I did not insult you, I initially said, "This is a below ambient thread", which in my thoughts regarding freon compressor cooling is sub zero cooling, and so I agree that even sub zero is below ambient.

What I should have said was this is a water cooling thread, in that case your post is off topic!

However your idea is interesting!

I would like to know the answers to the questions above?

Additionally to fully understand your concept?

The 2 chambers are to isolate the freon compressor side from the motherboard side?

Meaning the freon compressors cooling head with be directly attached to the CPU through a sealed opening between the two chambers?

The oil submersion on the motherboard side is to take the place of air, eliminating the condensation point?

If that is a correct assumption of your intentions, have you considered the heat the compressor gives off?

You cannot get something for nothing, that's the trade off with the peltier cooling I am running, yes I get cold to use water cooling, but also get heat that has to be dissipated as well.

In your 2 chamber setup you'll have a good amount of heat building up in the second chamber where the compressor is actually located, so what are your thoughts regarding that?

In the opposite respect the oil on the motherboard side will get extremely cold, which benefit wise may keep the motherboards voltage regulators cool at the same time, without circulating the oil? IDK?
 
*Has he fully investigated the negatives of oil submersion?*
Other than the obvious ones, such as voiding warranty, leaks, and inability to upgrade the hardware, etc, I don't know if there are any other cons involving oil submersion. Perhaps if anyone has done it, they can explain to me the effects mineral oil while it is in contact with bare copper tubes. I would be oxidizing the copper tubes to enhance the steampunk effect, 😉 but i don't know whether the mineral oil would corrode my copper tubes or not.

*The 2 chambers are to isolate the freon compressor side from the motherboard side?*
Yes, it was explained in my first post and I included my MS paint picture to further the explanation, but I apologize for not fully explaining my concept in details. The main purpose of using 2 separated chambers is for purely aesthetics. I wanted to hide the ugly compressor behind the mobo and decorations, but again, heat could be a problem here. I'm actually shopping on ebay to pickup an another compressor as my freon compressor is too big to hide. But because my mobo is fully submerged, excluding the I/O ports, mineral oil should *in theory* isolate the hot temperature of the running compressor.

*Meaning the freon compressors cooling head with be directly attached to the CPU through a sealed opening between the two chambers? *
That's what I originally thought of doing, but it could change( using 2 separated sections of the fish tank). I wanted to steampunk my fish tank pc by running copper tubes directly through the sealed openings. I will upload the *slightly* enhanced ms picture as visuals.

*The oil submersion on the motherboard side is to take the place of air, eliminating the condensation point?*
That's what I'm hoping to do 😛

*If that is a correct assumption of your intentions, have you considered the heat the compressor gives off? *
My initial idea was to make a rad box to hide the compressor, condenser, compressor controller, etc to separate the heat, but as I toyed around with the properties of mineral oil, I decided that mineral oil can isolate heat(cooling from evaporator, heating from compressor) both ways.

*You cannot get something for nothing, that's the trade off with the peltier cooling I am running, yes I get cold to use water cooling, but also get heat that has to be dissipated as well.*
I'm very well aware of this problem. TEC is only a heat pump as it moves heat from the one side to the other. However, due to its inefficiency in power to heat ratio, I decided to try vapor compression refrigeration. I even considered entropy based refrigeration(my current research project), but because it's a passive system, it cannot dissipate high amounts of heat in time. I chose oil+freon as it has steampunk factor in it. 😀

*In the opposite respect the oil on the motherboard side will get extremely cold, which benefit wise may keep the motherboards voltage regulators cool at the same time, without circulating the oil? IDK?*
See above
 
@unj008

Now that you have confirmed that water has no part in your cooling plans.

I think your project does have merit and will be interesting to see how it turns out, in your own thread Please.

This is a water cooling thread and has been kept on track as a water cooling thread since the first post.

Your proposed cooling is off topic in this thread so the right thing to do, is to create your own thread on oil submersion.

"Exploring Below Ambient Water Cooling", is the title to this thread, and this probably doesn't seem like much of a welcome back since you've been MIA from THGF since February of 2012 with your first post back in this thread.

However I have invested a lot of work in this thread and I would appreciate it, past the rules, if you would respect that.

I have fully investigated oil submersion cooling, I have no interest in it, nor do I have any desire to discuss it, but there are plenty here that will.

With all due respect, Thank You. Ryan
 
With your system loaded (synthetic or gaming) can a single peltier maintain a target water temp? If not how long do you have until water temps become unacceptable (over ambient or whenever stability issues arise)?

I believe this is one of the reasons you have 2 peltiers in your setup, so this would never be an issue. However this has not been explored and has a large impact on planning.
 


The key word in your question is target water temperature, for example I like to play FarCry 3 around 10c water temperature, reason being 10C was my target in going to the peltier cooling in the first place, because I was replacing what I could already do with ice.

With both peltiers engaged I can play maintained in the 10c range as long as I want to play, and 10c is still above condensation forming.

With my room AC off one peltier runs around 17c water temperature and slowly creeps toward ambient playing the same game, but I would have to game for 4 hours solid to get to 23c ambient.

With my room AC on keeping the peltier from warming the air it's cooling itself with, it will never reach ambient.

The AC was installed in my office long before the peltier was put into use, I have direct sunlight on my office window from 9am to 5pm which can change my office ambient from 23c to 26c if I want to maintain 23c I have to run the AC, even in winter.

I'm sharing the AC information because it is also a relevant factor controlling the relative humidity of the room and also knocks down the peltiers heating effect it brings to the table, you have to keep in mind that if the heat given off by the peltier is not controlled as well, it will heat the air the peltier is being cooled with.

I have the peltier cooling balanced to my room environment, that includes hot side heat sink fan speed vs heat exhausted by one peltier in operation vs two peltiers in operation vs ambient room temperature controlled.

It's not a cookie cutter cooling solution, there's a lot of trial and error testing involved, to discover what works best for your situation and your expectations of the overall cooling.

I never go past ambient even with one peltier running, however I have numerous times gone below 10C and turned off the second peltier to avoid condensation problems.

Target temperature is what matters and the second peltier gives me absolute control over that, whether my room AC is running or not.

All the above information is gaming with DX10 ~ DX11 games, running Win7 Pro 64bit, seeing as how most are running Win7 64bit of some flavor.

I am also dual booting WinXP Pro 32bit, and that operating system is a far less demanding system and usually always runs with just one peltier running even gaming.

Edit Important additional information:

If you've read this thread the 2nd peltier was initially bought to attempt adding both the GPUs to the entire loop, but 2 peltiers could not handle the heat load of the overclocked CPU and 2 additional GPUs, however one peltier by itself was able to handle the CPU cooling even in Win7.

When 2 peltiers are used in the loop the 2nd peltier has to be switched to turn it off or else the water temperatures will drop down way into the condensation zone.

When the 2nd peltier is switched off it is no longer cooling below ambient, but it is still in the loop, which means it is a hindrance to the primary peltiers cooling performance, it does not affect it anywhere near as bad as a radiator in the loop does, but it does slightly affect it.

Somewhere up in the thread the reported results of just using one peltier gaming is posted.
 
Quick question for ye Ry,
Didn't you solder two molex lines together at some point to keep the voltage/current up?
I'm currently using one of the positives and one of the grounds from an 8pin Pcie line for my new Tec (no improvement over old one yet) but wondered if adding a molex line to it would up the power going to the plate or just burn my house down,
I had a skim through the thread and can't find mention of it so thought I'd ask directly before I potentially destroy things 😛
**Edit, Page six,
**A single 12v rail is the best power supply option to use to make sure wherever you pull your power from will have the amperage available, and you won't be getting your power from the 18g molex cables either.
You will need to get power from 14g mains, like from the 8pin or 4pin motherboard connector, those are usually 14g.
I used 2 yellow positive 14g wires soldered together as the positive primary, and 2 black 14g negative wires soldered together as the negative secondary to power mine.
When it comes to powering a peltier you have to get your power from an area of the power supply that can handle the amperage draw which is a fixed not variable amount of power draw, or you'll burn up your power supply!
Learned that bit of info, just before learning it the hard way, more details are above in this thread somewhere.**
Now back to thinking 😛
So the two 12v's and two grounds from the 20+4 pin are my vict, erm favoured cables :)
Moto
 
Didn't you solder two molex lines together at some point to keep the voltage/current up?
I'm currently using one of the positives and one of the grounds from an 8pin Pcie line for my new Tec (no improvement over old one yet) but wondered if adding a molex line to it would up the power going to the plate or just burn my house down,
Click to expand...

In the beginning I did start out with the molex and almost burned up my power supply, because molex wires are only 18g and not designed for high amperage draw.

They got so hot when I touched them they burnt my fingers, when I discovered they were over loaded and over heating they were just before melting the insulation.

I finally used the 8 pin M/B connector, if you snag an 8 pin M/B extender cable you won't have to cut the power supply wires at all, just the extender cable.

It was an after thought in my case so I actually tied directly into the power supply 8 pin M/B connector wiring.

As you discovered below.

You will need to get power from 14g mains, like from the 8pin or 4pin motherboard connector, those are usually 14g.
I used 2 yellow positive 14g wires soldered together as the positive primary, and 2 black 14g negative wires soldered together as the negative secondary to power mine.
Click to expand...
then soldered to 10g stranded wire to the peltier.

I used 10g stranded wire for the long runs to the peltier connections to aid in power transfer, plus the 10g wire doesn't even get warm.

So the two 12v's and two grounds from the 20+4 pin are my vict, erm favoured cables
Click to expand...

I would recommend any of the cabling connections dedicated to higher amperage, 8 pin, 4 pin, M/B, or 8 pin/6 pin PCI-E, but that's just my preference.

As long as any of your wiring run is not getting hot is all that matters!
 
I'll leave as is then, the 8pin Pcie seems fine alone, I just wondered if soldering in another line would give it more juice,
I've an idea for shrinking this as well, I'll Pm you some randomness when I find the pics I need
**Edit, P.s. water temp in chiller is 12.4'C atm, room temps 18.31'C, the new plates a little more effective than the old one by about 3-4'C in current conditions, I have plans though as always 😛
Moto
 


As far as the wiring is concerned just make sure the connections at the power supply are not even getting warm, because the longer the peltier is drawing power the warmer it continues to get until they get hot, and that's bad.

12.4c water temperature, now you're getting somewhere! :)
 
I'm still keeping an eye out for a mass of copper to dump in there, reducing the watermass/internal size of the enclosure should help and using up the space in the chiller with copper should hold the cold more effectively as well, a smaller box would probably have been a better startpoint,
12.4'C is no load at the moment so once I load the Cpu in it would not be as low but the mass adjustments should give me plenty of tweakability to compensate,
as you know its finding the balance point :)
Wires on Psu are cold, no heat buildup at all
Moto
 


:lol: I was just going to say you could have gotten a water proof fan.

So when are you going to add the heat load to the chiller?
 
I was inspired to G.o.m.a. with the conversation so I've just added the box to the loop,
No rad fans on, only the intake and exhausts on the case itself on low, and cores are at 23'C
just booted and the boxtemp is 15'C in 18'c room, give it time to settle though,
New pelt is the one I linked, This one
I'm thinking about a 15v block for it as well lol to get the best from it
Moto
 
Not quite good enough hehe, I know the rads won't be helping at this point but I don't have the time to rebuild just yet so tweaking the volume is the only thing I can do right now,
I'm hunting and scouring my brain for things I have to hand that can be used,
I.e. take up space in the chiller but not be damaging to the loop, plenty of bike parts lying around but very little copper hehe,
I'm concerned at the moment that its only cooling the air in the box, not the actual water as well as it could be
Might grab two of these to fill it up some,
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-METRES-8MM-COPPER-PIPE-DIY-CAMPER-GAS-WATER-PETROL-DIESEL-CARAVAN-CAMPER-/150891510109?_trksid=p5197.m1992&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14%26meid%3D5494433664937159231%26pid%3D100015%26prg%3D1006%26rk%3D1%26sd%3D150891510109%26
Moto
 


The chillbox is great for chilling the air inside the box, but transferring that chilled air to the water to use for cooling the computer is another story all together, your PM idea has serious merit in being able to transfer the cold from the peltier directly to the water.

For what it's worth to you, before you buy a bunch of copper tubing Moto, I suggest you try your PM idea!
 
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